Committee To Take Message on Homelessness Problem To County Officials

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CCB MEDIA PHOTOElizabeth Wurfbain, executive director of the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District, leads a discussion at an open meeting of the Day Center Steering Committee.

HYANNIS – The committee that is working to find a new home and a new mission for the NOAH homeless shelter held its first open meeting yesterday morning at Barnstable Town Hall. The committee has a new name, the Transitional Living Center of Cape Cod Steering Committee, as it attempts to rename, relocate and change the mission of the NOAH shelter.

More than two dozen representatives of government, social service agencies and church groups attended the meeting to talk about ways to deal with the increase in the number of homeless people living in the shelter, on the streets and in the woods of Hyannis.

Elizabeth Wurfbain, executive director of the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District, is chair of the Transitional Living Center committee.

“We have a lot to do. We want to work with our executive committee and evolve the existing homeless shelter, look for a new site location as a group but work with all the partners,” she said.

The committee will next make a presentation to the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates, looking for help with funding and a location for the new model of a homeless shelter.

CCB MEDIA PHOTOBarnstable Assistant Town Manager Mark Ells talks at a meeting of the Day Center Steering Committee, as Paula Schnepp, coordinator of the Regional Network on Homelessness; County Commission Chair Sheila Lyons; and Barnstable Town Councilor Ann Canedy listen.

Transitional Living Center committee member Deborah Krau, who is on the board of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association, laid out the model of the new center which would focus on providing services to people who are substance free and working toward self-improvement.

Barnstable Police Chief Paul MacDonald, who is the town of Barnstable’s representative on the Transitional Living Center committee, has said his department has noticed a significant increase in the number of homeless people in Hyannis this year.

Wurfbain said she had just returned from an international BID conference in San Francisco where the increase in the number of homeless people in urban areas was the single biggest topic of discussion among those gathered.

“We know the reason that it’s become more challenging in the last year or year and a half is because a new population of people have been addicted to opiates and that’s added to the problems,” Wurfbain said.

The Transitional Living Center committee, which was responsible for adding a day program to the NOAH homeless shelter last year and making the center substance free this year, now wants to move the shelter out of downtown Hyannis, change its name and alter its mission so the focus is on moving people out of a dependance on services.

But the committee also wants to work on the problem of people living in the woods of Hyannis, where police have found unsanitary conditions and used needles discarded after illicit drug use littering the ground. The plan for that is having outreach workers, accompanied by police, venture into the camps to help individuals to access services. Housing Assistance Corporation, which runs the NOAH shelter, plans to hire an outreach worker. HAC has also brought in a project manager to work on finding a new location for the shelter.

Wurfbain said the process could take one and a half to two years to open a new shelter in a different location because of the challenges in finding a location and getting funding for the project.

She said the key is for all stakeholders to work together.

“We cannot politicize it and we cannot point fingers or blame. We have to all get together and say, ‘We have to all make this better.’ We have to manage it,” she said.

Barnstable Town Councilor Ann Canedy said she was glad to see two municipal officials from the town of Yarmouth at yesterday’s meeting. The steering committee and Barnstable town councilors have said they want to reach out to other towns on Cape Cod for help dealing with the growing homelessness issue.

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